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Cream Filling for Cake
Mix equal quantities of sour cream, chopped nuts and raisins. Add a little lemon-juice and powdered sugar.
Three lines and no measurements, which is typical of filling recipes in a left-overs book: the cook was working with whatever cream had turned in the crock. A few decisions have to be made for you.
- What "sour cream" meantIn older usage this generally meant cream that had soured naturally rather than the cultured product sold today. Modern cultured sour cream is thicker and milder, so the filling will likely be stiffer and less tangy — lean on the lemon juice.
- Equal quantities by volumeRead it as volume, not weight — say 1/2 cup each of sour cream, chopped nuts and raisins. That is enough to fill one two-layer 8-inch cake or a generous handful of split rolls.
- The sugar is not optional seasoningThe sugar does more than sweeten -- The recipe asks only for "a little powdered sugar," but sifted sugar also helps the mixture body up. Add it a spoonful at a time, tasting, until the filling holds its shape on a spoon.
- Lemon juiceA teaspoon is plenty. Beyond brightening the flavour, the acid tightens the cream slightly, which helps a loose filling stay put between layers.
- Chop finer than you thinkWalnuts or pecans cut to the size of rice grains, raisins to about the same. Whole raisins tear soft cake and make the layers slide.
- Assemble late, keep coldThis is an uncooked dairy filling with nothing to set it. Fill the cake within an hour or two of serving and refrigerate it; it will weep if it stands out, and the raisins will soften and bleed overnight.
- Plump the raisins first, or don'tSoaking the raisins in warm water or a spoonful of sherry and draining them well gives a better texture, but adds moisture — squeeze them dry before mixing.
This filling looks like something meant for spreading between slices of stale cake, or on split and dried rolls to make something presentable from what was already on the shelf. Left-overs cookery of the sort treated soured cream as an asset rather than a loss, since cream in an icebox or a cool cellar turned within a day or two and there was no question of throwing it out. Uncooked fillings of soured or clotted cream, nuts and dried fruit invite comparison with the raisin-and-nut fillings used in kolache and nut rolls; the acid in the cream, sharpened here with lemon, was the only thing standing in for the gelatin or cornstarch a modern cook would reach for.